


Hallmark

by BlackHolesandUnicorns



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood Friends, Cuties, Dimilix Week (Fire Emblem), Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22726348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackHolesandUnicorns/pseuds/BlackHolesandUnicorns
Summary: Felix is hunkering down for a Valentines day alone when a friend comes by to give him some moral support.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Mercedes von Martritz
Comments: 4
Kudos: 77
Collections: 2020 Dimilix Week





	Hallmark

**Author's Note:**

> For dimilix week 2020!! Day 1, modern au/valentine's day!

Mercedes showed up at six o’clock on the dot, armed with an overflowing armful of chocolates, wine, and microwave popcorn.

“I don’t like candy,” Felix informed her.

“That’s why I brought the popcorn, silly,” she replied, and huffed an exaggerated breath at him. “Are you going to leave me standing out in the hallway all night, then, or shall you let me in?”

With a grimace, Felix stepped aside, allowing her access to the apartment.

She was efficient and ruthless, he’d give her that. Within mere moments, she had two glasses of wine poured, the popcorn was clattering away inside the microwave, two boxes of chocolates were open, and the TV was set to the Hallmark channel and playing one of those awful Valentine’s Day movies.

It wasn’t exactly how he _wanted_ to spend his Friday night. But he didn’t have anything specifically better to do, either. So he found himself beside her on the couch.

“You can’t put something else on?” he asked finally, wincing after a particularly unbearable exchange of dialogue on the screen. “These things are churned out like sweatshop apparel. With a little less soul behind them.”

She _tsk_ ed. “Oh, be nice,” she said. “They’re traditional for those of us alone on Valentine’s Day!”

 _I’m not alone,_ he wanted to say -- but, of course, he demonstrably was. So he sighed and held his tongue and considered watching, all the way to the predictable, ridiculous ending and the subsequent rolling credits.

“Ridiculous,” he muttered.

“I thought it was nice,” she replied, endlessly cheerful.

He shook his head. “It was cliched, unrealistic, and everyone made the worst possible choice at every available moment. She’s going to lose her job, acting like that. And speaking of which, why are the women in these movies all high-powered ad execs, anyway? Who is this meant to be relatable to?”

But Mercedes was eyeing him in that way she did, sometimes. Clever, pointed, and far too knowing. “You don’t think it was nice that she walked away from her work to be with the man she loved?”

His stomach twisted. He looked away. “Nice? Sure. It’s nice. But it’s not how things work. A lot of people were counting on her. The world doesn’t shut down because it’s the middle of February.”

“I don’t think things have to be that way, if --”

“Well, they are,” he said sharply.

A sympathetic little coo emerged from the back of Mercedes’s throat. “Are you okay, Felix?”

He pushed back his hair, blowing out his frustration all at once. “I’m fine,” he muttered, and drained the rest of his glass before passing it to her. “Whatever. It’s fine. Fill me up, the next one is starting. Reliable as clockwork.”

He nursed his drink in silence, not really watching the movie, which was basically just a reskinned version of what they had just watched. Her sympathetic words clung to him, made him feel sour and frustrated in the pit of his stomach. What was the point of her relentless optimism? The way he approached things was fine. No disappointment.

“I don’t _need_ you to keep me company, you know,” he said finally. “I didn’t ask.”

“I know,” she replied, unperturbed as ever, gaze fixed on the television.

“I’d be just as well on my own,” he insisted. “You can even leave, if you want.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, you should. Putting yourself out like this for my sake -- what’s the point? I don’t attach any particular relevance to a date on a calendar. That’s not who I am. That’s not who _he_ is. I’m honestly fine. I’m more than fine. I don’t even care. I can’t believe you drove four hours just to sit here when I honestly, actually do not care!”

His voice, he realized, had risen quite a bit. He cut himself off, feeling heat flood his face. A general tip for not sounding like you care, he reminded himself, was to not start shouting about how little you cared. Not a great look.

“You didn’t have to come,” he finished lamely. “That’s all I’m saying.” She finally turned to look at him, her violet eyes painfully soft. “I know I didn’t.”

She wasn’t arguing with him. He ought to let it go with that. But his tongue continued flapping against his better judgement, running off on its own, determined to win an argument that they weren’t actually having. “The thing is, he did his best to get back tonight, and he couldn’t make it work. I know he tried, and it’s fine. I’m the one who _told_ him it was fine. He even offered to move things around, derail this entire trip and disappoint a ton of people and disrupt everyone else’s schedule to make this work, and I’m the one who told _him_ \-- not to bother. Because it’s not a big deal. And I’m fine.”

“You’ve said that,” she said, very gently.

Honestly, he ought to congratulate her on her restraint. He was practically ranting like a madman.

He forced himself to relax, to lean back against the cushions. “Right,” he murmured. He gritted his teeth and grimaced. “Right,” he repeated, more firmly. “Sorry. I’ll stop talking.”

“All right,” she agreed, because she knew that if she told him that she didn’t want him to stop, he’d just keep going.

She was a saint, really. A saint with awful taste in movies. He watched with a sour pit in his stomach right up until the buzzer rang.

He sat up, infernal, infuriating _hope_ blossoming in his chest. He squashed it brutally. _This_ was why he didn’t want Mercedes in his apartment with pink and red hearts practically wafting out of her like she was a damn cartoon. He was perfectly fine with everything exactly the way it was, but then she showed up, played her idealistic movies, got him tipsy, and then all of a sudden he _wanted_ things. He wanted things to be different. He wanted the world to be more forgiving.

He wanted Dimitri to be here, to be _home_ instead of at some board meeting in Europe, too far to touch.

“I ordered some Thai food delivered,” Mercedes said sweetly. “That’s probably them. Do you want me to get it? I paid online…”

He pushed himself up. “It’s fine,” he sighed. “I’ll get it.”

He was halfway to the door when he saw the time. Past ten. He furrowed his brow. The doorman wouldn’t let anyone in so late. He should have had to have buzzed the delivery boy in himself, or met him down at the street level.

A resident probably let him in, Felix told himself, trying to slow his thudding heartbeat. There were a thousand possible explanations for why a delivery guy might have gotten to the sixth floor of a nice apartment building on a Friday night. Don’t imagine something better. Don’t dream of the impossible.

He steeled himself before looking through the peephole, squashing all idiotic, unreasonable hope. Thai food would be nice, real nice. Exactly what he was craving, in fact. Mercedes really did think of everything.

His breath left his lungs when he looked out into the hall.

His hands shook as he pulled at the locks. “Shit,” he breathed helplessly as they came undone, one by one. “Shit. Shit. Fuck. What the fuck? Shit, shit, shit --”

The door flew open, and there he was. Blue roses in his arms. Blue suit immaculate. Blue eye shining. And smiling that hapless, puppy dog grin he had, melting Felix’s knees away.

“You have a key,” Felix gasped helplessly, just standing there, staring at him, while he thought his heart might explode out of his chest. “You _live_ here.”

Dimitri extended his arms, overflowing with roses. “My hands are full,” he said innocently, by way of explanation. “And you had the chain lock fastened, so I couldn’t --”

“What are you _doing_ here?” Felix demanded, clutching the door frame to hold himself upright. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Germany right now? Talking to a dozen billionaire international investors? Which is incredibly important and which you absolutely cannot afford to miss for anything in the world?”

Dimitri’s smile went wolfish, lopsided and self-effacing and oh so devastatingly handsome. “I cancelled?”

“What the hell!”

Dimitri pushed the armful of roses toward him, as if they were answer enough on their own. Despite his better sense, Felix accepted them without thinking, unsure of what else he could possibly do, gathering them up into his arms. There had to be at least one hundred, each one perfectly formed and smelling divine. Their weight was staggering.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Dimitri said, and he spoke so tenderly that Felix’s eyes watered in response.

A sound from behind him made him jump, and he hurriedly reached up to brush at his eyes.

“Oh!” Mercedes cried, coming up behind them. “You made it!”

“You kept him in good spirits, I hope?” Dimitri said, turning to honest-to-god bow at the waist in her direction. Unbelievable. He was so ridiculous. Always so ridiculous!

“I did my best,” she said with a little giggle, and then breezed past them. She already had her purse and coat in hand. Felix watched her, so overwhelmed he couldn’t even accuse her of anything. Had she known? Had she expected this? “Keep the sweets, of course,” she said. “And the wine! Though we mostly emptied it out.” One lid dropped into a wink, and she dropped her hip playfully as she waved. “Have a nice night!”

And just like that, she was gone, flouncing off down the hall like the insufferable angel that she truly was.

“Can I come in?” Dimitri asked, after a beat of silence.

Heat flooded Felix’s face. He stumbled aside, looking down at his feet. “You live here,” he repeated.

Dimitri laughed. “I suppose I do,” he said, stepping inside.

When the door closed behind him, something snapped. With the fluorescent light from the hallway gone, leaving only the ambient light of their apartment and the distant, cheerful music from the Hallmark channel, it all felt very real -- and maddeningly romantic. His body moved on its own, throwing itself against Dimitri’s bulk, his warmth, his presence, and it was all he could do to breathe -- just breathe.

Dimitri’s hands came up a moment later. On his back. His shoulders. Into his hair, curling and stroking against his scalp. “Now,” he said, softly and gently. “You’ll crush the roses.”

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Felix said, voice muffled against his chest. He ought to step back, shake himself, go find a vase, but the tightness in his own voice betrayed that his face might show far more of his feelings than he wanted to reveal. “Do you have any idea how crazy this is? That meeting was _important_! You are going to be in _so_ much trouble! What on earth were you _thinking_?”

Dimitri laughed quietly, his chest rumbling with it. Felix felt his chin against the top of his head, and then his breath stirring his hair. “I was mostly just thinking about you.”

“Imbecile,” Felix accused. His tone was not at all convincing. “You could have just called me. You’d be home tomorrow night. What could possibly be worth risking everything! What was going through your head?”

“Ah.”

Dimitri stepped back, then, and Felix turned his face away, twisting to march off toward the kitchen. Dammit. He couldn’t let Dimitri see his face, not when he was so -- _affected_ by this, by something so objectively foolish. He heard footfalls behind him as Dimitri followed him, so close at his back that he could still feel his warmth.

“Nothing,” Felix said, shaking his head as he threw open a cupboard, looking for a vase. He’d need one the size of a missile silo to house these flowers. “Nothing at all was going through your head. You --”

“That’s not true.”

A moment later, he was pinned against the countertop. Dimitri’s hands took the roses from his arms, laid them gently upon the counter, and then hands were on his hips, demanding and forceful. They pulled him about, twisting his body and then pushing him back, lifting him up so that he rested at the edge of the countertop.

A finger touched his chin, forcing him to look up into one bright, shining sapphire eye.

Dimitri’s smile made his stomach clench.

“I was actually thinking about when we were children,” he said, softly. His voice was so low, so sweet, it vibrated the air and put a thousand butterflies into Felix’s middle. “I was thinking about being in school together. How you’d have a special Valentine just for me, and you’d always give it to me on the playground, instead of exchanging it with all the others. How you’d blush when you gave it to me, but your eyes would be so bright and determined…”

Felix struggled without much effort against his firm hold. “I was practically a baby, back then,” he muttered. “Let me go.”

“But then,” Dimitri continued, reaching to brush hair from his forehead with a painfully tender touch. “Then there was the year that Valentine's day fell on Sunday. And our teacher said that we’d do the exchange on Monday.”

Shit. He’d forgotten all about this! He burned, squirming away from him so that he could look down at his chest, his hands adjusting and then smoothing his tie for the lack of anything better to do. “I was a kid,” he breathed. “A stupid kid.”

“And so sweet,” Dimitri murmured, brushing at his cheeks, and then cupping them. “Your father called mine. Couldn’t find you anywhere. Going out of his mind. His credit card was gone, too. He thought you’d been kidnapped, or run away, or something awful. Only, just when we were about to contact someone, just when we were starting to panic, there you were, on my front step with a crumpled Valentine in your hand. You walked all the way from --”

“I didn’t walk,” Felix corrected him, defiant despite himself. He looked up at him at that, finally, because if Dimitri was going to bring this up, he might as well get the details right! “I took a cab. That was why I had the credit card.”

Dimitri’s face broke into a wide grin, and he shook with laughter. “Ah, that’s right! You had the cabbie altogether convinced that your little trip had parental sanction! The poor fool.”

He shrugged helplessly, his hands fisting into Dimitri’s lapels. “He got paid.”

“I suppose he did. That’s just what you said then, too, wasn’t it? You paid him fair and square, and you wouldn’t have had to have done it if you’d just been allowed to come to see me. Because, you see… it was Valentine’s Day, and you couldn’t give me your gift on a random, unremarkable Monday.”

“Dimitri…” Felix murmured. He was so embarrassed to be reminded of the event that he didn’t even know what to say… but he did know that from his pelvis to his chin, he felt a comforting, deep, sweet warmth that didn’t align at all with his frustration. “I was a kid,” he repeated, finally. “I know now that the date doesn’t matter. The feelings do. I -- you didn’t have to do this.”

“No,” Dimitri said softly. “But the more I thought about how you looked on my doorstep, that Sunday afternoon… the more I realized that I did _want_ to do this.”

Felix had to look away, back down at his hands, at Dimitri’s tie, at anything but his face. He shook his head. “You’re going to be in so much trouble,” he repeated.

“Maybe,” Dimitri agreed. “But tonight, I’ll be with _you_.”

A tingle went all the way down Felix’s spine, until his very toes were alight with want and pleasure and anticipation and happiness and delight.

He looked back up at him. Standing there, real and present and stupid and wonderful, like a god damned flesh and blood Hallmark movie brought to life.

“Fine,” Felix agreed in a sigh, relenting to the unstoppable force before him. “Let’s get these roses into water, then -- and then you can put your money where your mouth is.”

Dimitri laughed in delight, and then his lips were on Felix’s, then up his jaw, then up to his ear. When he whispered there, he made Felix shiver all over. “Well,” he said. “I intend to use my mouth far more than money, if I’m being honest…”

He didn’t let him down.

**Author's Note:**

> This is ofc dedicated to my lovely wife I love her.


End file.
